Rain or Shine expects tougher game against Guiao’s NLEX

Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

After the Elasto Painters highly emotional duel against Star on Sunday, where they faced former cornerstone
Paul Lee, they now brace for higher stakes against NLEX and former coach Yeng Guiao on Friday.

That’s why coach Caloy Garcia was really hard on his side following Rain or Shine’s 99-91 loss to Star on Sunday.

“Well of course, we wanted to win the game, so that going to the game against coach Yeng at least, we have momentum,” he said.

Garcia pointed to the Elasto Painters poor execution down the stretch as their downfall, losing hold of a 10-point lead in the third frame and getting outscored by the Hotshots, 25-16, in the payoff period.

“We were playing great, but then in the second half, our second unit came in and I was expecting more energy and to continue the defense that we were applying. But the second group didn’t play defense that much, that’s why they caught up that easily,” he said.

Not helping their cause was the 14 turnovers, a handful of which coming in the late stages of the game.

“I told them, ‘Our mistakes against Ginebra just happened again today.’ We committed four turnovers, I think, in the last three minutes of the game which cost us a lot because a lot of those turned to fastbreak points for Star. We just have to look forward to the next game and play harder, I guess.”

With this game over, Garcia is keeping his fingers crossed that Rain or Shine has learned its lesson following another meltdown, especially with the Road Warriors up next.

“I told the players after the game that our next game will be a lot harder because we know that we run the same system, and after the three setbacks that NLEX had, most probably coach Yeng is going to find a way to fire up his players,” he said. “We just have to be ready against NLEX.”